Młoda Polska i Młod(sz)a Ukraina. Twórczość przekładowa i działalność popularyzatorska Władysława Orkana w perspektywie postkolonialnej
Young Poland and Young(er) Ukraine: Władysław Orkan as Translator and Popularizer from a Postcolonial Perspective

Summary/Abstract: Polish writer and translator Władyslaw Orkan was one of the greatest popularizers of Ukrainian literature in Poland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He translated and edited a selection of Ukrainian novellas Młoda Ukraina, published in 1908. Ukrainian motives also constituted a significant element in his own work (Kostka Napierski, 1925). The paper discusses Orkan’s translations and metatexts (prefaces, introductions) in the context of postcolonial criticism. Numerous texts describing Polish-Ukrainian relations have shown essential postcolonial legacy recognizable in Polish writing on and about Ukraine (see. esp. Skórczewski 2013, Bakuła 2014). Orkan’s strategies in translation were influenced by his personality and the need to speak for Ukrainian literature in Poland. As writer he was a lonely figure because he was one of the first Polish writers of peasant origin who wrote about rural life and presented values hitherto absent from Polish literature. By raising Ukrainian literature to the status of a national one, Orkan proved that there was a separate national Ukrainian culture. Accordingly, he may be said to have contributed to the process of de-colonizing Ukraine for the Polish reader.

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